If you are employed as a programmer, please look

This is a discussion on If you are employed as a programmer, please look within the A Brief History of Cprogramming.com forums, part of the Community Boards category; I feel kind of bad asking this big of a favor here right after joining, but I'm pretty desperate so ...

If you are employed as a programmer, please look

I feel kind of bad asking this big of a favor here right after joining, but I'm pretty desperate so I hope you won't think bad of me and will offer your assistance. I was referred here after asking the same question at the notebookforums.

In my English 1002 class, I am writing a report in which I need to do two interviews with computer programmers. I have already completed one, and I don't know where to turn for the next one, so I'm trying here. My interview is only ten easy to answer questions. So I ask, if you are a computer programmer, it would be of great help to me if you would please answer my questions and send the answers to me ASAP via just replying here, e-mail (pdistefano@sw.rr.com), or AIM (FloodFighter117).

To clarify, I need computer programmers that are actually employed as computer programmers, and make a living off of doing so.

Please answer the following questions and provide for me your first and last name, place of employment, and position title at your job, if any (and any other information you think may be useful to me is also appreciated) for Works Cited purposes:

1) Do you enjoy your job, and whether you do or don't, has this job always been something you've wanted to do?

2) Did your job cause you to have to move/be away from your family?

3) Where do you work (or are you self employed)? Please give a brief description of the type of industry your place of employment is (i.e. Software design, producing consumer goods such as food or medicines, furniture manufacturer). Note: If you are self-employed, please briefly describe what you do.

4) How long have you worked there/been in business for yourself?

5) (If applicable) Does your place of employment offer promotions/advancement in positions or pay?

7) What are your work hours (i.e. Normal 40 hour work week, work late some days, work weekends, a lot of overtime)?

8) What do you like the most and the least about your job?

9) Does this job allow you and your family to live comfortably (i.e. No worrying about money, allows you to provide for your family's/your needs and [reasonable] wants).

10) Do you ever fear the stability of your job (not fear of being fired, but fear of being laid off or something similiar)?

Thank you very much! I want to make this as painless as possible for you since you are helping me so much, so if you have any questions at all, please feel free to contact me by any of the methods I mentioned in the first paragraph of this topic.

>provide for me your first and last name, place of employment, and position title at your job
Julienne Guth, The Home Depot, Senior Software Engineer

>1) Do you enjoy your job, and whether you do or don't, has this job always been something you've wanted to do?
Yes, I enjoy it very much and while it hasn't always been what I've wanted to do, it has for the majority of my professional career.

>2) Did your job cause you to have to move/be away from your family?
No.

>Please give a brief description of the type of industry your place of employment is
Home improvement retail catering to the general populace preferring to do things themself and professional contractors whose specialization is building construction, improvement, or maintenance.

>4) How long have you worked there/been in business for yourself?
Over a year now.

>5) (If applicable) Does your place of employment offer promotions/advancement in positions or pay?
Yes

>6) Do you work in comfortable surroundings
Yes.

>(Please describe your work environment [i.e. office, home, organized, cubicle, unorganized,etc.])?
While I have an assigned office, my team and I generally work in a common open development area. It resembles a high school computer lab.

>7) What are your work hours
When I get there to when I can manage leaving. This usually ends up being something like 7 or 8am to about 6 or 7pm. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but that is a typical day for me.

>8) What do you like the most and the least about your job?
I like the comfortable and friendly environment the most. It's a place I can work long hours at and go home without being a zombie. What I like least is being required to write Java occasionally. While I'll use any tool to do the job and Java is a good tool when I need it, the language just chafes with me.

>9) Does this job allow you and your family to live comfortably
Yes.

>10) Do you ever fear the stability of your job (not fear of being fired, but fear of being laid off or something similiar)?
Only because I'm paranoid. My reason for taking this job is because I was laid off from my last one, so I'm still a bit touchy.

Please answer the following questions and provide for me your first and last name, place of employment, and position title at your job, if any (and any other information you think may be useful to me is also appreciated) for Works Cited purposes:

N. Voigt, working for a medium sized firm someplace in Germany, Software Engineer

1) Do you enjoy your job, and whether you do or don't, has this job always been something you've wanted to do?

I always enjoyed programming, organizing stuff and making things work, so yes, this is the job I always wanted. Somedays I think pornstar might not have been so bad either, but programming is a good second choice

2) Did your job cause you to have to move/be away from your family?

No. It's about 30 km away from my home, about 15 minutes to drive on a good day on a German Autobahn

3) Where do you work (or are you self employed)? Please give a brief description of the type of industry your place of employment is (i.e. Software design, producing consumer goods such as food or medicines, furniture manufacturer). Note: If you are self-employed, please briefly describe what you do.

I'm working in a team writing software for a service company. It's mostly specialized client/server systems for batch processing large amounts of address data in different ways as well as user interfaces to allow people to manually manipulate data in our database. Large amounts means *large* amounts. Many Millions.

4) How long have you worked there/been in business for yourself?

6 Years

5) (If applicable) Does your place of employment offer promotions/advancement in positions or pay?

Generally, payment gets better with experience and as we continually get more experience, we get pay raises. But it's up to every single programmer to negotiate that with our respective bosses and it's not like it's granted or automatic.

In the office we have one large room. Everyone has it's own desk. 4 Desks are put together to form a group of four people/desks. Basically, we put it that way because it makes the most sense. But if we had a better plan, we would be free to change it in any way we see fit. Organization varies from team member to team member. I think I'm somewhere on the more organized side of the scale.

7) What are your work hours (i.e. Normal 40 hour work week, work late some days, work weekends, a lot of overtime)?

We have 40hr weeks, which is quite much in Germany. Times are flexible, no one really cares when you make these 40 hours as long as the results are what is expected. Normal working times are inside 08:00-20:00. I'm normally in from 8 to 16:30. If a project requires more work, I'm one of the volunteers to work any other hours, because I'm single. I know the family guys appreciate it and I don't really mind. Sometimes I work at the weekend, about once every other month. I have access to our servers at work from home and I'm checking if my own programms are working correctly if neccessary. I dialed in three times today for about 10 minutes each time. We have flexible times, but that goes both ways. I don't have problems doing the things I want to do even if that means that my workday shifts around that, but I'm also available for my employer should the firm need me at specific times that are outside the normal hours. I like it that way and wouldn't want to work 9-5. Maybe that will change when I have a partner/family.

8) What do you like the most and the least about your job?

I like creating logical constructs and watching them succeed in the respective tasks. I like the freedom those flexible times offer me. I like to have colleagues who feel the same.
I dislike that my work is sometimes judged by people who don't know anything about it ( though this happens rarely where I work. But I can imagine it being even more of a problem elsewhere ). I dislike that sometimes my job seems to be a perfect copy of the Dilbert Comic I read in my lunch break. But I guess that's normal, or Dilbert wouldn't exist

9) Does this job allow you and your family to live comfortably (i.e. No worrying about money, allows you to provide for your family's/your needs and [reasonable] wants).

It allows me to judge my expenses by what I *want* to spent, not what I *can afford* to spent. That is a great luxury, but most likely will change if I ever get more ties like a partner, family and that stuff

10) Do you ever fear the stability of your job (not fear of being fired, but fear of being laid off or something similiar)?

No. Especially the fact that I have written most core systems of the client server software and I was never given enough time to document it properly for anyone to pick it up ( I did ask for that time, it's not my fault that there is always a next project that is pressing ) makes me think that I'm worth more than the 6 years on my resume. Where do you get a guy with not only 6 years in C++, but also 6 years experience with your self-developed application *g* Matter of fact I don't think anyone from the team would be easily replacable. We could hire 2 people if the amount of work would be the decisive factor. But as always, it's costs

No. Especially the fact that I have written most core systems of the client server software and I was never given enough time to document it properly for anyone to pick it up ( I did ask for that time, it's not my fault that there is always a next project that is pressing ) makes me think that I'm worth more than the 6 years on my resume. Where do you get a guy with not only 6 years in C++,

No wonder my Boss wont let me proceed with my project unless I document what I have done in the past...

Since I am still a student and on placement not sure if my entry to this survey would be right.. anyway..

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1) Do you enjoy your job, and whether you do or don't, has this job always been something you've wanted to do?

I enjoy my job as this is what I have wanted to do for long.. But its just for a year and will be getting back to Uni next year....

2) Did your job cause you to have to move/be away from your family?

Yes I had to move 3000 miles (guessing) to study and get this job as a part of the placement...

3) Where do you work (or are you self employed)? Please give a brief description of the type of industry your place of employment is (i.e. Software design, producing consumer goods such as food or medicines, furniture manufacturer). Note: If you are self-employed, please briefly describe what you do.

I work for one of the largest telecommunication firm in the globe... My job mainly involves working on proprietary VoIP protocols..

4) How long have you worked there/been in business for yourself?
Around 2 months

5) (If applicable) Does your place of employment offer promotions/advancement in positions or pay?
Well not for me atleast because I will be here for just a year...

6) Do you work in comfortable surroundings (Please describe your work environment [i.e. office, home, organized, cubicle, unorganized,etc.])?
Yes the sorroundings verry comfortable.. Basically I get my own desk and each cubicle like stuff houses 3 to 4 such desks...

7) What are your work hours (i.e. Normal 40 hour work week, work late some days, work weekends, a lot of overtime)?
As long as I cover my 37 hours a week quota and do my job I can come in and go at any time I like... My typical day starts at around 9.30 - 10.30 in the morning and may last till 5.30 to 6.00 in the evening...

8) What do you like the most and the least about your job?
The ability to design my own solutions and implement it in the way I want as long as it works efficiently is something that I liked about this job..... But I hate the documentation part and also hate designing the management part of the solutions..

9) Does this job allow you and your family to live comfortably (i.e. No worrying about money, allows you to provide for your family's/your needs and [reasonable] wants).
I am a single student now and the pay allows me to live a comfortable student life and save some cash fro my uni next year...

10) Do you ever fear the stability of your job (not fear of being fired, but fear of being laid off or something similiar)?

1) Do you enjoy your job, and whether you do or don't, has this job always been something you've wanted to do?

Sometimes. I like working with computers and very intelligent people.

2) Did your job cause you to have to move/be away from your family?

I have had to move more into implementation as the programming jobs are shifted over seas. This means I have to spend up to a month on site in mining towns. The work there is hard, 12+ hours per day, 7 days a week, until I get the job done.

3) Where do you work (or are you self employed)? Please give a brief description of the type of industry your place of employment is (i.e. Software design, producing consumer goods such as food or medicines, furniture manufacturer). Note: If you are self-employed, please briefly describe what you do.

I work in engineering. Just finished a train safety system using digital image processing and now developing a GPS based tracking device.

4) How long have you worked there/been in business for yourself?

I have been contracting since 1995, including four years with one company. Before that I ran a PC support/supply service for 7 years.

5) (If applicable) Does your place of employment offer promotions/advancement in positions or pay?

The contracts are fairly short (3 to 12 months). I negotiate my own rate of pay with the agency (some try to get up to 40% of your pay over the contract). I work for between $40 to $60 per hour depending on what and where.

Mostly my home office. In the outback I was in two sea containers next to a railway track in the desert. One was air-conditioned, the other go too hot to work in (sometimes >40 c outside). Mounting video cameras ect on a railway track in those conditions was not pleasant.

7) What are your work hours (i.e. Normal 40 hour work week, work late some days, work weekends, a lot of overtime)?

The hours are until it gets done. I didn’t get paid overtime. Average would be 45 – 50 hours per week. Normally 8am to 6pm. Onsite usually starts at 6am to 7pm (or when the 7pm train passed)

8) What do you like the most and the least about your job?

Most: Inventing things (when they work).
Least: Having muppets misuse the application then claim it does not work properly. I can see their errors in the history. Diplomacy stops me telling them that they are at fault and I have to ‘fix’ the app so they can’t make the same mistake.
Some workers do not want the app as it will impact on the 'perks' in their job (ie a tracking device in their delivery truck stops them using it on weekends). These people will actively try to stop the app being accepted (my job is to ensure acceptance by the client).

9) Does this job allow you and your family to live comfortably (i.e. No worrying about money, allows you to provide for your family's/your needs and [reasonable] wants).

Yes, less so than it did. I make much more money from my properties (they have tripled in the last five years).

10) Do you ever fear the stability of your job (not fear of being fired, but fear of being laid off or something similiar)?

Yes. Lots of work is outsourced. Soon there will not be experienced people here in Australia capable of fixing any of these apps.
Property is too expensive, wages low, hours long………luckily I don’t do this for the cash.

1) Do you enjoy your job, and whether you do or don't, has this job always been something you've wanted to do?

I enjoy it based on the project. I cannot see myself doing anything else to be honest. I enjoy computers, however I have learned that I may not always enjoy working in the industry due to reasons other than programming.

2) Did your job cause you to have to move/be away from your family?

Yes. Right now I am 1200 miles away from family.

3) Where do you work (or are you self employed)? Please give a brief description of the type of industry your place of employment is (i.e. Software design, producing consumer goods such as food or medicines, furniture manufacturer). Note: If you are self-employed, please briefly describe what you do.

I work at a DOD(Dept. of Defense) contract in the USA. I work in a software development group where we work on everything from C/Motif on Unix to Java/XML on Win2k server.

4) How long have you worked there/been in business for yourself?
Roughly 2 years at the current place, I worked previously in 2 other companies dealing with unrelated technologies.

5) (If applicable) Does your place of employment offer promotions/advancement in positions or pay?
Yes.

Office/cubicle environment. Ever see the movie office space? well there you go.

7) What are your work hours (i.e. Normal 40 hour work week, work late some days, work weekends, a lot of overtime)?

40+/weeks.

8) What do you like the most and the least about your job?

The best thing about my job is working with new technologies in the computer industry, the worst thing is dealing with red tape of accessing needed tools b/c there is too much emphasis on security, since it's a govt. position. I had a previous job where I could download open source tools as I pleased and any other tools would be ready for my usage by the end of the week, not here.

9) Does this job allow you and your family to live comfortably (i.e. No worrying about money, allows you to provide for your family's/your needs and [reasonable] wants).

I am single bachealor, not too much luggage for this kid.

10) Do you ever fear the stability of your job (not fear of being fired, but fear of being laid off or something similiar)?

Even in a govt. position there can be layoffs but I have been through a layoff before so I know what to expect and how to survive.